Story:Nobody's Safety Guaranteed/Intermission 4
Now my dreams come to me in a tumbling flood, bits and pieces mixed up all together. They are like an avalanche, building and building, and I am a skier riding on top of it. Skiing is a game I have seen in Kai’s dreams. He and his Mum are very good at it. His Dad is not. I saw an avalanche in another dream. An avalanche is a white, white wall, like a cloud made of sound, and it eats mountains. Sometimes I can skim over its surface just like Kai does, and sometimes I am just keeping my balance on its edge, holding on, hoping that it will not eat me. But as the days pass, more and more I feel like I am the one in control, that I can travel through my avalanche of dreams with just a thought. Maybe I will even be able to change its direction, one day. Deng thinks so. She has me describe all the images I see, even though many still make no sense to me: flashes of people with different faces, passing so fast that I can never fix them in my head, walls with plastic moons or pink girls with butterfly wings, straight strips of grey crossing green points that are both spiky and soft. For more than an hour every day, Deng writes all my dreams down and explains what each bit means. Where once she would only show me an object from the other world when I had been very good (and how rarely did I behave that well!), now she brings me something from my dreams nearly every day. She smiles so much now that I am nearly frightened of the change, until I remember that this change is a good thing: it means I am doing so well with the dreams. It means that Deng is happy. One day, I will understand everything that is in my dreams. Then I will be able to control them. Maybe Deng will give me another hug if I do. I have a secret now. There is another reason why I want to keep dreaming. As soon as sleep enfolds me, I go to find Kai. Visions flit past me, clamouring for attention. It’s like swimming through a school of white fish. Most of them show boring, blank rooms, even barer than my one, so they are easy to ignore. The ones with other people usually scare me, and I brush them away from my face. But even when an interesting one catches my eye, I do my best to leave it alone for now. Visiting Kai always comes first. But today, when I finally find him sitting in his bedroom, there is someone with him! Kai looks taller in this dream, which I am used to, but I have never seen him with a person who isn’t Mum or Dad. The person beside him wears a white coat, like Deng, and has black hair like her too, but his skin is the colour of the tea she drinks, he looks taller and stronger than even Kai does and he has funny eyes which never seem to stay still. Kai is sitting beside the stranger, and he does not look afraid. In fact, I realise with mounting trepidation, he seems almost relaxed. Like he trusts this man. The man is showing Kai a photograph with Mum and Dad in it. I can feel his sadness, the sharp heat of tears in the corner of his eyes that he does not want to shed and for a moment I bristle, wondering if this man is hurting him. The man in the labcoat says something about family and I want to ask more, but at that moment, Kai realises I am here. Go away! he whispers to me. He is saying something else to the stranger, but the fuzz of his voice in my head blocks it out. I am stung, but hang my head in understanding. Maybe this man is Kai’s new family – another stinging thought, one with the coldness of fear in it. I am good. I love Kai, so I leave him to give him space. This is what I keep telling myself, as I stand amidst my swirling visions. They gently butt against me, soft and ticklish against my arms and legs, pleading like children who want attention. All their busyness only makes me feel lonelier. Perhaps it is because of that loneliness that I decide to reach out for one of those white dreams instead, with cells just like mine and Kai’s. I fall into a nightmare of agony. My back hurts. There are lines of fire crawling across it, each step a flare of white-hot pain. I can feel every fibre in my gown sticking into them, caressing spikes of agony out of my back with every movement. I hate myself because I cannot stop from moving; even if I could stop myself crying, I would still have to breathe. Please, I would rather not breathe. I would rather die. Please, will you make it stop? No, no, this was not my nightmare. I throw myself out of that nameless torment and immediately stumble into another one. I am in darkness, a blackness so absolute that I cannot tell if it is from the absence of light or if I have lost the ability to see. Fruitlessly, like I have done a hundred, thousand times, I wave my hands before my face. I can see nothing, though my fingers must be less than a centimetre away. They have blinded me again. A silent sob wracks my body; I want to beg, but no sound comes from my throat – am I mute or have they deafened me this time? How many days are they going to leave me like this again- It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. Blessedly, I can see, I am back in my dream, floating amidst whiteness, and I need to find Kai. Kai, Kai, I’m sorry I have to barge in again; you’ll understand that I need you to keep me safe from this, but which one is your cell? I am sitting in a cell. I am alone. There are photographs on the walls: adults staring at me with attitudes of adoration, their mouths slack with awe at my presence, eyes shining with the beautiful, defenceless certainty of faith. They know I am their hope. That is where I am meant to be, so why have I been left here, alone? I know nothing but white walls and motionless images now. I speak no words. I touch no hearts. I am alone. I am alone. I am alone- The dreams are no longer children; they are beasts, tearing at me; they have driven me to the ground and now they are snatching at my flesh. I need to wake, to find Deng. She will keep me safe. I strive towards wakefulness, but all that comes to me is a white cell wall, rushing forward to envelop my head. The name of my carer is Doctor Yastrebov. It is Doctor Yastrebov who designs my training. It is he who speaks to me every day. Even my punishment is in his hands; he wouldn’t trust anyone else with it. He makes me understand: it’s my fault, because I couldn’t do what he asked. It’s my fault I failed again. We all want a thunderstorm and all I could do was make sparks dance around my stupid, stubby fingers for a few seconds, so I deserve- They are children. Children and their carers. The realisation is like a flash of the pain that I have witnessed. I do not understand. I cannot form the questions that my heart cries at me to ask because the dreams are not stopping, the children who are crying will not stop, another is flowing into me. My right arm ends in agony. It is beyond pain, beyond anything a mere wound could cause: it is a convulsion, a paroxysm, an electric spasm that will not end. And yet, and yet, that is all I am allowed to focus on. All I want to do is black out. But there is a man holding onto my other hand, speaking soft, steady words like poison, and I must listen to him, please, please, let me do better, let it be like it used to, do anything to make it end. Anything. The mind quails away at such pain. It drives me away and allows the bit that is really, truly me to separate. Now I can see the person holding my hand, this middle-aged man with a bland, hateful face, all detached concern and no love, no love at all. I can escape, but the girl who is also me cannot. I can feel all the tears that she is trying so hard not to shed for this man. I hate him: a burning, overwhelming emotion that rips through me, shreds my thinking mind into nothing but outrage, into a wordless need to do something, anything, to make him stop. I want to scream at him, ‘How could you?’ I want to reach out and take everything away from this man, this heartless scientist without love, so that he can never harm anyone again. But I cannot. There is nothing I can do to change their fates. And my heart breaks. I wake, weeping and screaming. Deng is there immediately: warmth, cradling arms, murmuring soothing words. Every fibre of my being wants to be cocooned in her comforting embrace. She is safety. But how can I breathe, seeing what I have just seen, feeling what they have felt? Deng is asking me questions that I cannot answer; all I can do is shudder in her arms. It goes beyond words. It was real. They are suffering, right now, and I can do nothing to help them. The helplessness is like an endless, empty hole opening up inside of me; it is grief, it is blackness. I am weeping, and I can hear the children weep with me. |}